Great, wonderful, thanks a bunch folks, I can scroll, shutdown, use my entire keyboard and all thanks to you guys! And of course, my original problem is solved and I don't have to go out and buy a SW radio after all - I have sound!

thanks again

:-)

I'm begining to feel a bit upset about all this.

Just as I thought everything was all set up (keyboard, scolling mouse, shutting down etc), it all went ominously quiet. I looked in all the log files and everything is fine, well, it obviously isn't, but I didn't see any messages of failure. So I swapped back to run level 3 and then typed startx on the console. And there it was in black and white:

kmixctrl: ERROR: Alsa mixer cannot be found.
Please check that the soundcard is installed
and the soundcard driver is loaded.
kmixctrl:
kmixctrl: ERROR: Alsa mixer cannot be found.
Please check that the soundcard is installed
and the soundcard driver is loaded.
kmixctrl:
ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed:
Broken pipe
ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed:
Broken pipe
ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed:
Broken pipe


lsmod says

ros@darkstar:~$ lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
ppp_deflate 3256 0 (autoclean)
zlib_deflate 18328 0 (autoclean) [ppp_deflate]
bsd_comp 4344 0 (autoclean)
ppp_async 7392 1 (autoclean)
ppp_generic 19492 3 (autoclean) [ppp_deflate bsd_comp ppp_async]
slhc 4976 0 (autoclean) [ppp_generic]
snd-pcm-oss 37736 0 (unused)
snd-mixer-oss 12504 0 [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-cmipci 16964 0
gameport 1420 0 [snd-cmipci]
snd-pcm 56072 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-cmipci]
snd-page-alloc 6328 0 [snd-pcm]
snd-opl3-lib 5892 0 [snd-cmipci]
snd-hwdep 4804 0 [snd-opl3-lib]
snd-timer 13604 0 [snd-pcm snd-opl3-lib]
snd-mpu401-uart 3200 0 [snd-cmipci]
snd-rawmidi 12740 0 [snd-mpu401-uart]
snd-seq-device 3888 0 [snd-opl3-lib snd-rawmidi]
snd 30852 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-cmipci snd-pcm snd-opl3-lib snd-hwdep snd-timer snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device]
soundcore 3396 4 [snd]
uhci 24444 0 (unused)
ehci-hcd 17580 0 (unused)
usbcore 59308 1 [uhci ehci-hcd]
ntfs 51424 1 (autoclean)
ide-scsi 9328 0
apm 9580 2
ros@darkstar:~$

and modules.conf

ros@darkstar:~$ cat /etc/modules.conf
# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF verion 1.0.5 ---
alias char-major-116 snd
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
alias snd-card-0 snd-cmipci
alias sound-slot-0 snd-cmipci
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---

ros@darkstar:~$

I guess I must have upset somebody in a former life...

Try alsactl restore from a terminal. If that works, add that command to your rc.local file.
good luck.

One of the missing symbols ( snd_kalloc ) should be in
/usr/src/linux-2.6.5-7.111/include/sound/core.h

Also, the permission denied messages when you were root sounds like a problem and possibly why sound didn't work in the first place. You might want to look if you have write permissions denied for the user or a partition mounted read only.

you could also check /etc/rc.alsa to make sure its set as executable....that file should be doing the "alsactl restore".

Since all the modules look loaded that file is most likely fine.

Also you might try running alsamixer from a terminal and making sure everything is unmuted and then do an "alsactl save"

then reboot and see what happens.

It's a conspiracy to prevent you from listening to the Beeb.

I have four Slack 10 based systems running here with varying hardware and have no problems at all with things suddenly not working.
I'm mystified as to why your ALSA suddenly stopped working - try the fellas suggestions and let us know what results you get.

I've solved my problem and I must admit that I do feel a bit foolish. I removed my .kde directory and after that, all was fine.

I think I should explain so that others can reap the rewards of my um, mistake.

I had mandrake 10 installed with 2 partitions, one for the os and 1 for /home, where my 4 users had their files,

Then I installed slack 10, keeping /home partition, cos I didn't want to lose all my files (altho I did back them up first).
I created a temporary user with slack adduser script to make sure that the keyboard etc all worked, & at this point everything was fine, so I created myself & the rest of the family again, telling it that my home directory was on /home and that I didn't want to delete it first. That went ok too, until I logged on, which I couldn't cos mandrake puts users in group username and slack in group users, so I had to mess about a bit with chown to change the group ownership of our directories to 'users'. Then we could all log on, but without a peep of sound. After a period of vain experimentation with alsa, I reinstalled slack, which is far less nerveracking second time around, and I still had no sound, unless I created a new user.

With the most amazing powers of deduction, I concluded that the problem lay with the user set up, so I deleted my .kde which presumably had lots of mdk stuff in it and logged out and back in again. And there it was.

So, apologies for my last cry of distress, and now I really think that all is well

thanks a lot

ros

I just love a good old fashioned success story. Glad you got it sorted.

Double Edit:

I'm an idiot.

Okay, well I found this post while in search of answers:

I have the same mobo and definitly the same sound (AC'97). I'm running Sarge-Debian on the 2.6.8-1 kernel - and....I have no sound

Reading through the thread, it sounds like I'm rather screwed. Can one of you perhaps make it clear if I can or cannot get this hardware to work. And if I can - how can I do it other than switching to slackware?

Thanks...

Okay, I apologize for the strings of posts - but I got it working.

What I did was fairly focused on Debian abilities (apt-get, mainly) - but I got it working. If anyone is running Debian and has this same problem, feel free to IM me (Gamezace), or email (gamezace@cox.net), and I'll help you out.

If you post the steps taken to get things working, it may help the next user coming along to read the thread without any intervention on your part.

Heh, I know. I thought about it but my problem turned out to have little to do with the hardware, and more to do with my stupidity - so I didn't know if it belonged here or not. Plus it relies heavily on Debian's functionality.

Basically, when I had tried to setup alsa on my own, I created 2 sets of alsa-base and alsa-modules on my computer. Of course, it went a little crazy. The solution was to #apt-get remove alsa-base , start from scratch, and then #apt-get install alsa-base again, followed by alsaconf. It worked soon thereafter

Linux doesn't put up with stupidity, heh.

Sweet.

I should just point out that this VIA soundcard will work just fine with Linux on some mobos and not on some others - it's to do with how the mobo maker integrates the sounchip and how an Intel module operates.

Just for a laugh, you might want to try the wonders of commercial OSS under which this chip should always work. Give http://www.opensound.com a look if you're interested.